Bigger Proportion of U.S. Students Interested in Going Overseas

The percentage of American students who say they want to study overseas is almost three times that of their British counterparts, according to a new study that the British Council’s research arm, Education Intelligence, released last week during the Going Global conference in Dubai.

Only 20 percent of students in Britain said they would consider studying overseas, compared with 56 percent of U.S. students, according to an online poll of more than 10,000 students conducted in cooperation with the National Union of Students in Britain and Zinch, an online student network in the United States.

Both British and American students cited similar hurdles: inadequate information about potential foreign destinations and the perception that overseas study would be too expensive. According to the new “Broadening Horizons” report, language and cultural barriers seemed to be less of a concern. — JOYCE LAU

McGill and Toronto make changes in top positions

There have been major changes at the tops of two of the top-ranked universities in Canada.

McGill University in Montreal announced last Tuesday that Suzanne Fortier would become its new principal and vice chancellor in September, after she steps down as president of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. In a city with language and cultural divisions, the local news media have noted that the Quebec native will be the first francophone to head the English-language institution.

McGill’s current principal, Heather Munroe-Blum, the first woman to hold that post, will finish her term at the end of June. McGill’s media relations office initially said that a new principal would be announced in February, but then backtracked, saying the decision had been delayed.

The University of Toronto said in a statement last Monday that Meric Gertler, the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science and an expert on urban issues, would be its newest president.

U.S. News and World Report, using data from the QS World University Ranking, rates McGill as 18th in the world and the University of Toronto as 19th. — JOYCE LAU

Shuffling, but no additions, atop university prestige list

According to a new ranking by Times Higher Education, based in London, not much has changed in the world of university reputations.

With only minor shuffling between spots, the top 10 institutions in terms of reputation remained the same: Harvard; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Cambridge; Oxford; the University of California, Berkeley; Stanford; Princeton; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Tokyo; and Yale.

As they did last year, the developing nations of Brazil, Russia, India and China had a disappointing showing in the top 100. Beijing’s flagship universities both slipped: Tsinghua from 30th to 35th, and Peking University from 38th to 45th. Brazil and Russia, a new player this year in the top 100, had one university each. India was left out entirely.

If anything, the T.H.E. report states that the gap separating the six Anglo-American institutions it calls the “super-brands” from the rest of the pack is widening, not narrowing.

These rankings, which rely on the opinions of 16,000 senior academics, reflect only a university’s reputation and are separate from the T.H.E.’s main comprehensive university listing. The report was released during the Going Global conference in Dubai last week. — JOYCE LAU

At an event last week that drew 700 guests, Imperial College London unveiled plans and an artist’s impressions of Imperial West, its new research and innovation campus.

The university said that the centerpiece for the 7-acre, or 2.8-hectare, campus in west London would be a Research and Translation Hub estimated to cost £150 million, or $225 million. The Hub is expected to be completed in 2015.

The institution is looking for partners for the project, from the corporate and the academic worlds. Imperial West’s first building, which is used for housing postgraduates and researchers, was opened last September. — JOYCE LAU